Sunday, February 01, 2009

doggie rivalry

Cliff's sister Rena lives next door in our old house. She works three days a week, twelve-hour days. On those three days, Cliff and I tend to her Dachshund, Angel. We make sure she has a few chances to potty; if it isn't too cold, we take her with us on our walk. I always keep a sharp eye out for red-tailed hawks when we're walking with Angel, because at eight pounds she'd be easy enough prey for one of those.

Sometimes Angel is happy to spend time at our house. Other times she'd just as soon go home, and when she lets me know this, I take her on over there.

Angel's a little bit of a glutton, and we're all trying to limit her food because it's especially bad for dachshunds to get too fat. It leads to severe back problems for them.

Any time Angel comes to visit, she heads straight for Sadie's dish. Sadie sees this and runs to protect her food, hovering over it and emitting a low growl. We watch this behavior closely, but it's never come to anything except Sadie finally getting tired of the "I'm top dog" act and going to her bed. Then Angel eats, until I remove the food for the sake of her health.

What's funny is how Angel responds to Sadie's tyranny.

She stands right beside the dish and looks the other way, as if to say, "I'm not even looking at your food. I don't see it, and if I did, I wouldn't eat any. I'm not hungry."

I wouldn't THINK of taking a bite. I'm just checking the ceiling for cobwebs.

Dogs are so funny. You would think Angel never gets any food LOL. Ken says when he used to do pest control in some homes with a dog they run straight to their food dish and start eating as if they think he was going to get their food LOL. Helen